Democracy can indeed create stability, but it largely depends on the level of education of the people involved. This is the main problem. We can see now in there is a trend to follow Western democracy in all the third world countries, whereas the ordinary people of those countries are still living in poverty and mostly uneducated. How can they participate if they don't know what democracy actually means?
According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels: Physiological needs, Safety needs, Love/Belonging needs, Esteem needs and self-actualization needs. The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are satisfied. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level, needs in the lower level will no longer be prioritized.
For example, let's take the poor and starving people in Africa and South America. They will not be able to think of democracy as long as they don't get what they really need: food!( The lowest level of physiological needs). Do you think that political rights to vote is more important than food and shelter which is necessarily needed to survive?
Even if those people have acquired proper food and shelter, they must learn the true meaning of democracy first. This is when the role of the government becomes important, to educate and improve the people. It's quite absurd if we see that people voting without really knowing what benefits they will receive.
Who invented democracy? The Greeks! After becoming rich from sea trade and suffering terrible periods of being harshly ruled by the kings, they started to think of equal participation. The famous Greeks city-states are the most obvious examples. Democracy was born from mature thinking.
In my viewpoint, in order to apply democracy, people must be well educated and well aware of their rights. The people living in democratic society must really know how to live with democratic principles to build better society without any discriminations. Only after they know what they are going into and what benefits they will receive, can they will use their maximum effort to participate.
Stability is created as long as the society and the government produce positive results and more-or-less equal benefits to all people. The negative impact of democracy is that it is very difficult to turn around when the system is going wrong. It will be hard to detect the flaws and to repair them because the people have been sticked to one ruling system only. This is the disadvantage of democracy.
However, come back to my viewpoint, the people must know first what democracy is all about in the very first place. That is why successful examples of democracy are usually the developed and prosper Western countries such as United States, England, France and Germany. We cannot make the developing countries in South America and Africa to practice democracy in the way that USA does. It will definitely not work; it will bring unrest and chaos instead because everyone thinks they are right because they have their own rights.
In conclusion, as I just mentioned above, democracy creates stability only in some particular situation which is the developed countries because the vast majority of the developed countries have most of their people well-educated and have enough money to hold a just election, or campaigns. We cannot force the developing countries to apply the democracy like some Western countries which has very loose government control.
For Maslow's hierarchy of needs, refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels: Physiological needs, Safety needs, Love/Belonging needs, Esteem needs and self-actualization needs. The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are satisfied. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level, needs in the lower level will no longer be prioritized.
For example, let's take the poor and starving people in Africa and South America. They will not be able to think of democracy as long as they don't get what they really need: food!( The lowest level of physiological needs). Do you think that political rights to vote is more important than food and shelter which is necessarily needed to survive?
Even if those people have acquired proper food and shelter, they must learn the true meaning of democracy first. This is when the role of the government becomes important, to educate and improve the people. It's quite absurd if we see that people voting without really knowing what benefits they will receive.
Who invented democracy? The Greeks! After becoming rich from sea trade and suffering terrible periods of being harshly ruled by the kings, they started to think of equal participation. The famous Greeks city-states are the most obvious examples. Democracy was born from mature thinking.
In my viewpoint, in order to apply democracy, people must be well educated and well aware of their rights. The people living in democratic society must really know how to live with democratic principles to build better society without any discriminations. Only after they know what they are going into and what benefits they will receive, can they will use their maximum effort to participate.
Stability is created as long as the society and the government produce positive results and more-or-less equal benefits to all people. The negative impact of democracy is that it is very difficult to turn around when the system is going wrong. It will be hard to detect the flaws and to repair them because the people have been sticked to one ruling system only. This is the disadvantage of democracy.
However, come back to my viewpoint, the people must know first what democracy is all about in the very first place. That is why successful examples of democracy are usually the developed and prosper Western countries such as United States, England, France and Germany. We cannot make the developing countries in South America and Africa to practice democracy in the way that USA does. It will definitely not work; it will bring unrest and chaos instead because everyone thinks they are right because they have their own rights.
In conclusion, as I just mentioned above, democracy creates stability only in some particular situation which is the developed countries because the vast majority of the developed countries have most of their people well-educated and have enough money to hold a just election, or campaigns. We cannot force the developing countries to apply the democracy like some Western countries which has very loose government control.
For Maslow's hierarchy of needs, refer to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
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